There is growing demand for portable storage devices and solutions. There is interest in increased storage capacity, but also for improved file security.
Examples of portable storage devices include hard drives, thumb drives and other devices with access to cloud storage. The most common form of protection for storage media is password authentication. Cloud storage using password protection requires users to log into a specific website or install proprietary software on the host which authenticates with the cloud server. Thumb drives typically use proprietary software which must be installed on the host system. In each case, the proprietary software is additional software required to be installed on the host device for the purpose of authentication at the particular secure data storage device.
Proprietary software on the host system may be compromised by malicious users through OS or browser exploits, viruses, trojans, key loggers, and many other forms of intrusions known to those specializing in security. Cloud storage and the current secure thumb drives are also vulnerable to a wide range of attacks.